"The Prodigy" tells the story of small-time enforcer Truman Fisher's vicious conflict with a sadistic assassin who has chosen the unwilling Truman to be his successor. The assassin, who goes by the alias Rains and whose exploits have become the source of legend among Truman's underworld colleagues, drives Truman, through the pressure of constant violence and grief, to understand his own capacity for both bloodshed and compassion. Ultimately this reveals to Truman that he as with all of us, must find our place in this world or as Rains would say "our place in this grand design." This action begins quickly as Truman meets with a turncoat from a rival gang. This tense showdown erupts quickly into mayhem, when Rains makes his unexpected entrance. In the wake of the ensuing bloodbath, Truman is forced to reevaluate his own role in the small, violent world he inhabits, suddenly aware that there are larger powers at work which he does not understand...
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Too much of everything
A different way of telling a story
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
I was in Belgium this week and get a chance to see this movie (The Prodigy). I was visiting a friends home and watched the movie on DVD. All I can say is this, Wow! I was dumb struck from the beginning. In the first 15 minutes there was more action than most movies have in their entirety. The gun battles and fist fights were like no other ever filmed before. The directing and acting was total quality. I never heard of these actors but they all did an amazing job. I was really taken with the star of the film Holt Boggs and I really liked the female lead Diana Lee Inosanto. Can't wait to see what they do next, hopefully a prequel or sequel to this movie. Also, your really going to like what the director Will Kaufman and his DP did on this film. They gave this movie both, a beautiful look and it was creepy all in one. Do yourself a favor and check this one out. I can't wait for the US release.
The 2006 Edinburgh International Film Festival has premiered an array of high quality feature films, imported from around the globe. However, there will always be a few bad eggs that manage to slip through the festival's cinematic net. 'The Prodigy' is not so much a bad egg, as a scavenging rat that has the ability to close down the most reputable of London restaurants. Previously well received in the United States, William Kaufman's gangster flic resembles a B-movie, as it follows tough-guy 'Truman' around the blood-stained streets of Dallas, Texas, attempting to track down a psychopathic assassin who has kidnapped a local mob-boss' nephew. Too often than not, the dialogue is mind-numbingly boring and the pitiful performances are enough to tip a suicidal man over the edge. A truly terrible film.
This intense debut feature from William Kaufman should have secured him a career for life as it is just plain awesome. An action packed yet wholey original film, it delivers in every respect with superb shoot-outs, amazing sequences, a riveting story, great performances and an ending which leaves you gagging for more. The story begins with a drug deal which goes drastically wrong as a mysterious killer appears on the scene and guns down everybody, and the rest of the film basically revolves around tracking him down, to oversimplify. The story is not that complex, but then, it doesn't need to be, and despite sounding like a tired premise, you can take my word for it that you have not seen anything like it before. I'm not going to say anymore except to advise you that if you want to be absolutely amazed and gripped for two hours, watch this film.
The Prodigy begins with a drug deal going sour. Only instead of 2 sides facing off against each other in a typical Mafioso fashion, someone dressed like the Scarlet Pimpernel but with the aggression of Jason Voorhees on crack, appears out of nowhere armed with a zillion weapons and cuts them all down before getting into a brutal fistfight with last man standing Truman Fisher. The action is so searingly intense, it makes recent actioners like Running Scared look like a 70s episode of Seasame Street in comparison.The mystery villain is soon revealed to be some sort of mystical mega-psycho who goes by the name of Claude Rains (as he is, in a way, an invisible man) after he kidnaps the nephew of a gang boss. Truman Fisher is sent to find him but discovers that there is some kind of weird connection between him and Rains.That is where my understanding of the film ends as it becomes far too messy and unfocused. At a running time of 2 hours I feel a lot of fat could have been cut to keep a tighter, more nervously wrought pace. Whenever Rains is on screen, doing his shooting, slashing and torturing the film absolutely soars. But in between, when Fisher is going from one place to another, it really lags. And by the end you won't have a clue what's going on or why. Less filler during the second act and more coherence in the third would have made this film so much better. I wasn't the only one who felt this way as there were several people in the audience who left halfway through.Made on an unbelievably small budget of $219,000 the film honestly looks 10 times that amount. The action and fighting is amazing and Rains is a truly terrifying, imposing villain who pushes this film well out of the Crime genre and into Horror.Obviously, since the budget is so small, it won't star anyone you've really ever heard before but they do just fine. A few characters are completely superfluous and could have been cut-out in a more preferable, leaner running time however.The film is surprisingly stylish and action-packed considering it's low-budget nature but that doesn't excuse the increasing lack of sense as it goes on.Still, it's a fine attempt at film-making and adds something new to both Action and Horror.
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